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THE MAKINGS OF A WORLD PREMIERE
Date: 4/29/2010 By Dr. Carol Reynolds
THE MAKINGS OF A WORLD PREMIERE
-by Dr. Carol Reynolds
Excerpted from the 2010 Festival Program
The premiere of a new opera – a newsworthy rarity today – was once as ordinary as the opening of a film. For centuries, operas were the prime form of entertainment. They had to be "hot off the presses." And that meant portraying timely topics, including controversial ones. Composers, librettists, directors and singers worked frantically as each minute ticked closer to the opening curtain. That creative push fueled opera to ever-greater heights.
Precisely this energy surrounds the Fort Worth Opera's 2010 World Premiere of Jorge Martín's Before Night Falls. The production of this opera is significant for the company and for everyone involved.
Consider this fact: operas are rarely written these days without a specific commission. But Martín wrote Before Night Falls because he wanted to. It was an act of conscience. Martín himself had emigrated from Cuba with his family as a six-year old in 1965. Although too young to understand the rationale, he remembered the smell of fear around him. Those memories strengthened his musical instincts.
(CONTINUE AFTER THE JUMP FROM THE E-NEWSLETTER)
But instincts were not enough, so he relied upon the vision of his co-librettist, Dolores M. Koch (d. 2009). She provided invaluable insight, especially since she had known Arenas and translated his writings.
Martín and Koch took every step to insure accuracy, calling upon Cuban émigrés for advice, particularly for the prison and interrogation scenes. They made the decision to compress several of Arenas' literary colleagues into the composite character Ovidio, a role based in part on Arenas' mentors, dissident Cuban poets Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) and José Lezama Lima (1910-1976).
Yet as personal as the story was to Martín, he yearned for it to be universal in its appeal – to portray "an individual set against the sweep of history," he stated. The story offered the same qualities, he believed, as one of his favorite operas, Verdi's Don Carlo. But to make it all work, much would be required of the singer portraying Arenas. In a turn of fortune worthy of Arenas' life, fate cast the die. At the high-profile Seagle Music Colony in Schroon Lake, New York, in the summer of 2008, a student named Wes Mason stunned listeners with his performance of Arenas in a workshop rendition of Before Night Falls. The composer was in the audience, and so, too, were Fort Worth Opera's General Director Darren K. Woods and several members of his staff. They sat, spellbound, rising with the rest of the audience to cheer at the final curtain.
Woods' decision immediately to book both the opera and the young Mason was made with "a cold heart, a sharp eye, and sharpened pencil." Woods knew what he had, and so heeded easily the advice of Director David Gately who said "You've got to trust me, but there's nobody on earth who can bring what this kid [Wes Mason] is going to bring to it."
Mason's youth and stamina are invaluable. Arenas' character is almost continuously on stage, a strenuous demand unknown in opera until the early 20th century (Strauss' Elektra comes to mind). But the composer has paced the role by writing what Mason calls "perfectly gorgeous and lyrical phrases that provide nothing but support for the interpreter."
Still, how does a singer (especially such a young one) navigate an opera that begins with a final illness in the Prologue, springs back to boyhood and then wends itself through a chain of difficulties to reach his character's death? Mason credits the composer for weaving these transitions directly into the melodic writing. The teenage Reinaldo has the most "lyric and playful" vocal lines, he says. The younger adult gains "more depth and weight . . . hint[ing] towards his full maturity." The older Reinaldo is more on the "grittier or dramatic side of vocal color and is certainly the most heroic."
The opera is rich in memorable characters, starting with the ethereal voices of Arenas' two Muses – allegorical figures of the Moon and the Sea who, at critical points, break through the darkness and save the writer from self-destruction. Martín composes shimmering music for these roles, particularly in their first trio with Arenas, which Mason says moves "as one person or thought . . . one sweeping big phrase of collaboration." The composer cleverly double-cast the soprano role, sung by Janice Hall, as both the Sea and Arenas' mother. Both roles are maternal and inspiring.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking role is that of Arena's literary mentor, Ovidio, sung by Jesus Garcia in his debut with the Fort Worth Opera. After mentoring Arenas earlier in Act One, Ovidio denounces him at the act's end after he, too, has been broken by Castro's regime. Victor, an idealistic revolutionary turned murderous interrogator sung by Seth Mease Carico, makes a stark foil to Arenas.
The chorus, too, plays an enormous role in Before Night Falls. Choral singers appear in guises as varied as Castro's guerillas, angry prisoners, revelers in Times Square, and, most hauntingly, an offstage halo enveloping the Muses' melodic lines.
Date: 4/29/2010 By Dr. Carol Reynolds
THE MAKINGS OF A WORLD PREMIERE
-by Dr. Carol Reynolds
Excerpted from the 2010 Festival Program
The premiere of a new opera – a newsworthy rarity today – was once as ordinary as the opening of a film. For centuries, operas were the prime form of entertainment. They had to be "hot off the presses." And that meant portraying timely topics, including controversial ones. Composers, librettists, directors and singers worked frantically as each minute ticked closer to the opening curtain. That creative push fueled opera to ever-greater heights.
Precisely this energy surrounds the Fort Worth Opera's 2010 World Premiere of Jorge Martín's Before Night Falls. The production of this opera is significant for the company and for everyone involved.
Consider this fact: operas are rarely written these days without a specific commission. But Martín wrote Before Night Falls because he wanted to. It was an act of conscience. Martín himself had emigrated from Cuba with his family as a six-year old in 1965. Although too young to understand the rationale, he remembered the smell of fear around him. Those memories strengthened his musical instincts.
(CONTINUE AFTER THE JUMP FROM THE E-NEWSLETTER)
But instincts were not enough, so he relied upon the vision of his co-librettist, Dolores M. Koch (d. 2009). She provided invaluable insight, especially since she had known Arenas and translated his writings.
Martín and Koch took every step to insure accuracy, calling upon Cuban émigrés for advice, particularly for the prison and interrogation scenes. They made the decision to compress several of Arenas' literary colleagues into the composite character Ovidio, a role based in part on Arenas' mentors, dissident Cuban poets Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) and José Lezama Lima (1910-1976).
Yet as personal as the story was to Martín, he yearned for it to be universal in its appeal – to portray "an individual set against the sweep of history," he stated. The story offered the same qualities, he believed, as one of his favorite operas, Verdi's Don Carlo. But to make it all work, much would be required of the singer portraying Arenas. In a turn of fortune worthy of Arenas' life, fate cast the die. At the high-profile Seagle Music Colony in Schroon Lake, New York, in the summer of 2008, a student named Wes Mason stunned listeners with his performance of Arenas in a workshop rendition of Before Night Falls. The composer was in the audience, and so, too, were Fort Worth Opera's General Director Darren K. Woods and several members of his staff. They sat, spellbound, rising with the rest of the audience to cheer at the final curtain.
 |
| Baritone Wes Mason (Reinaldo) in the Seagle workshop production of "Before Night Falls." |
Woods' decision immediately to book both the opera and the young Mason was made with "a cold heart, a sharp eye, and sharpened pencil." Woods knew what he had, and so heeded easily the advice of Director David Gately who said "You've got to trust me, but there's nobody on earth who can bring what this kid [Wes Mason] is going to bring to it."
Mason's youth and stamina are invaluable. Arenas' character is almost continuously on stage, a strenuous demand unknown in opera until the early 20th century (Strauss' Elektra comes to mind). But the composer has paced the role by writing what Mason calls "perfectly gorgeous and lyrical phrases that provide nothing but support for the interpreter."
Still, how does a singer (especially such a young one) navigate an opera that begins with a final illness in the Prologue, springs back to boyhood and then wends itself through a chain of difficulties to reach his character's death? Mason credits the composer for weaving these transitions directly into the melodic writing. The teenage Reinaldo has the most "lyric and playful" vocal lines, he says. The younger adult gains "more depth and weight . . . hint[ing] towards his full maturity." The older Reinaldo is more on the "grittier or dramatic side of vocal color and is certainly the most heroic."
The opera is rich in memorable characters, starting with the ethereal voices of Arenas' two Muses – allegorical figures of the Moon and the Sea who, at critical points, break through the darkness and save the writer from self-destruction. Martín composes shimmering music for these roles, particularly in their first trio with Arenas, which Mason says moves "as one person or thought . . . one sweeping big phrase of collaboration." The composer cleverly double-cast the soprano role, sung by Janice Hall, as both the Sea and Arenas' mother. Both roles are maternal and inspiring.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking role is that of Arena's literary mentor, Ovidio, sung by Jesus Garcia in his debut with the Fort Worth Opera. After mentoring Arenas earlier in Act One, Ovidio denounces him at the act's end after he, too, has been broken by Castro's regime. Victor, an idealistic revolutionary turned murderous interrogator sung by Seth Mease Carico, makes a stark foil to Arenas.
The chorus, too, plays an enormous role in Before Night Falls. Choral singers appear in guises as varied as Castro's guerillas, angry prisoners, revelers in Times Square, and, most hauntingly, an offstage halo enveloping the Muses' melodic lines.
